This is a writing exercise. Basically, it is a “short” that is only dialog. Idea from the website Writing Excuses.
“Uh, err… what the hell are you doing here?”
“The fact is I am here, so let’s just deal with the facts. Another fact, you will abandon your experiment.”
“Security!”
“Sigh. That is not helpful.”
“Security? Hello? Hello? Anyone there? If you can hear me, I need help, someone broke into level 5 and is threatening to blow us up.”
“Excuse me? I said no such thing.”
“Just stay back!”
“Look, I understand I surprised you, but I mean you no harm. Quite the contrary.”
“How did you get in here?”
“I beamed in from spaceship. No, actually I can walk through walls. Wait, perhaps I teleported this time after drinking a really bad espresso in a cafe in Paris, just down the road a bit from the Arc de Triomphe.”
“Stop talking, I need to think. Think, Henry, think. It is not possible. Hallucination? Lack of sleep could cause Hallucinations.”
“Yes, I am a hallucination.”
“Right right. Can I get back to my work then? Maybe I’ll take a nap.”
“As I was saying… about your work that is…”
“Hmmm?”
“Your hypothesis is mostly correct, however, instead of a glimpse of the fourth dimension you will actually destroy one, or more, protons. And by destroy, I mean turn it into dark matter.”
“Why on Earth would I stop the experiment then? To finally have proof of dark matter, to study it… it would be the greatest discovery yet.”
“In the First Era the universe was pure matter. No dark matter. It looked as though the expanded Universe would stabilize and last for an infinity, or as close to one as it could possibly get. But, it was not to be. Those that knew better began to experiment, to push the boundaries of safe science. They were ignorant, at first, that is true, but later they were arrogant. How does someone measure the change of light matter to dark matter? It is hard, even for the most intelligent and learned creatures. And so, it was millions of years of consuming light matter, before we even hypothesized about what we were doing. But how could we stop? Galactic empire after galactic empire were powered by the consumption of light matter. But even after millions of years, not even the finest equipment could detect the minute percentage of dark matter in the universe. So, it continued and continued until…”
“Ha. Dark matter is 90-99 percent of universe, Hal. And there is plenty of regular old ‘light’ matter to go around.”
“Cute, but I haven’t finished. Your experiment will split the ‘God Particle’ into two dimensions. This dimension will lose mass. The energy then comes from that particle stopping completely relative to everything else in the universe.”
“And? Whatever… you obviously are taking this somewhere. The flaws in your logic are… almost nauseating, but continue.”
“Probably from your lack of eating. I could finish that sandwich for you…”
“Sure.”
“Pretty good. A little too much rye in the bread for my tastes, but a sandwich eaten is a sandwich earned. Let’s say you have this satellite, such as the moon, traveling around a planet. Now it is traveling at pretty good clip… gravity pulling it towards the planet, inertia pulling it away from the planet, and so forth. Now, what would happen if you took away half its mass, and then all of its velocity. It stopped dead in space.”
“It would sort of ‘fall’ to the planet… or wait, it would either be left behind since the planet and the moon are traveling through space at a pretty good clip. Or if it were in the path of the planet, it would crash right into the planet… but we are talking about particles.”
“The moon has gravity as well, so let’s assume it is behind the planet. It would still pull on the planet, causing it to wobble slightly, or greatly depending on the size ratios. Either way, you get the general picture. When you smash these protons, the particles look like they disappear, but in reality, they are thousands of miles behind you in space where they suddenly stopped.”
“I still don’t see a problem with this.”
“You have a big explosion in a vacuum. It spreads and spreads. The explosion is just powerful enough to spread everything out just barely far enough away that never pulls itself back together to the center.”
“Wait. You are saying that the Big Bang has happened more than once? And the last time it exploded… this First Era… and you destroyed a small percentage of the Universe’s mass … and thus energy, if you will… meaning the light matter couldn’t escape the the massive pull back towards center… a Big Implosion.”
“Correct.”
“But, the universe is 90-some percent dark matter. What happens to it during the Big Bang?”
“It stays as dark matter. There is no rescuing it from the split dimensions. But it acts similar to light matter of equal weight… more or less.”
“How could you consume so much light matter. Even over a billion years, you couldn’t assume even a few percentages of light matter. Without a super computer, I couldn’t even calculate what it would take to change the course, but it would be massive.”
“Don’t forget that time is on the side of the Implosion. We consumed 1/10 of 1 percent of the known light matter, before we realized what was happening. But it was too late.”
“But… that means…”
“Countless Big Bangs have occurred. Each time we have tried to stop the destruction, each time we’ve failed. There are only handful of us left. And only a fleeting handful of light matter is left. It is still too large for the few of us to cover. But there is hope. You humans… you are early… very early in the life of this universe. Although it takes less and less to trigger the Implosion.”
“How did you survive?”
“Machines and technology that uses the same principle. We sit at the edge of the Universe as it begins to reverse. Using massive amounts of energy we are able expel ourselves further from the core. When we run out of most the energy, we get pulled back in… a few reactions and viola… our mass is reduced, and or velocity is halted. Eventually the mass of the Universe is so far away, it takes only a little power to remain free from its grip. Life begins, generally, around the same time and develops into civilizations, empires, and galactic empires at a fairly constant rate. It isn’t a matter of going into the future so much as moving to the place in space and waiting for matter to catch us. We then monitor for life.”
“But you must be millions of years old…”
“I’d guess more in the thousands. We don’t sit and wait around for millions of years at a time. And time is … ephemeral … so yeah, we are old. There is some evidence, as well, that dark matter existed before us, so it is clear we were not the first.”
“I think I understand, although it makes no sense that matter would stabilize in any way conductive to life. Would it not eventually stop?”
“Maybe. Although it is unlikely. It is more likely it turns into its own version of a ‘solar’ system. That’s the most likely model.”
“You don’t know? Perhaps we are here because other beings were smart enough to ‘destroy’ matter. Otherwise we would entropy, die, and be lifeless matter for the rest of eternity.”
“Yes. Perhaps.”
“Then why would I listen to you?”
“Because, this may be the last chance anyhow. 99.8 percent dark matter in the universe.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“I know.”
“What do you really look like? Can you show me?”
“I look like a turtle.”
“You do?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“More like a cow.”
“Meat?”
“Yeah, sort of like Kobe beef.”
“Really?”
“No. Anyway, here’s a zip drive I got for free from attending some conference on climate change. You’ll find the information helpful: a new form of energy that you will probably end up using to destroy yourselves. But, honestly, that’s better than the alternative.”
“Hmmm. OK. Any more advice?”
“Wear more hats.”